- 13/11/2017
- Category: Commentaries
Digital feminism takes part in the feminist movements emerging on the Internet to take down any patriarchic and misogynistic acts on the internet and to ensure equal treatment towards the subordinate netizens. Digital feminism also aims at putting an end to this extreme privilege in both online and offline society. Various feminists have started their movements through campaigns by posting various feminism contents throughout Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and websites.[i] Twitter as a platform, which could spread fast Information with only 140 characters, helps digital feminists express their thoughts throughout the world by their tweets and hashtags. So does it mean that everyone could be a feminist by creating antipatriarchy and anti-misogynist posts? No.
The hashtag #WomenBoycottTwitter on Friday 13th October 2017 has become one of the biggest online movement done by feminists, both men and women, throughout twitter. This movement was initiated by Rose McGowan, an American actress, who claimed that she had been sexually assaulted by one of the famous American film producers, Harvey Weinstein.[ii] Ms McGowan was not only violated by Mr Weinstein, but instead, she was also suspended by Twitter because she also tweeted something that violated Twitter’s Terms of Service when she wanted to tweet about her violation by the famous American Producer.[iii] The act of advocating the victims of sexual harassment and abuse by Rose McGowan failed at the beginning when her tweet was suspended by Twitter. This asserts that Twitter did not support her voice in helping other victims of sexual harassment and assaults.[iv] After Ms McGowan got suspended by Twitter, a mass of women and men including top celebrities such as Chrissy Teigen, Alyssa Milano, Mark Ruffalo, Terry Crews, and others helped Ms McGowan to fight back against sexual abuse and twitter which made the hashtag #WomenBoycottTwitter the number one trending topic on Twitter.[v]
While the hot trending topic keeps emerging in various tweets, the rage of feminism that Ms McGowan tweeted carried possible misleading points on the essence of feminism. The tweet “1) THIS IS RICH FAMOUS HOLLYWOOD WHITE MALE PRIVILEGE IN ACTION. REPLACE THE WORD ‘WOMEN’ w/ the ’N’ word” by Ms McGowan shows that the fight centered on one specific group, that is the white women.[vi] This online movement on twitter then irritated the People of Colour (POC) since the movement of silence could only be afforded by white people, and if a black woman stays silent, it would be equal to death.[vii]
The peak of the series of white feminism tweets created by Ms McGowan was then responded by Amelia Smalls who countered with the tweet that says “Black women exist, Rose. Black women and children who have a statistically higher rate of experiencing sexual assault know how it feels, Rose. Black men are victims of assault too, Rose.” This shows that understanding intersectionality on feminism is an essential aspect of creating any feminism protests especially on the internet where literacy is needed as we march towards becoming a digital society.[viii] Smalls’ statement shows that she sees #WomenBoycottTwitter as a movement created by #solidarityisforwhitewomen that emphasizes on the personal problem rather than the intersectionality that other women experienced.[ix] Even though Ms McGowan apologized on the POC, she blamed her mistake on marijuana which then only enraged the POCs even more as she did not admit that she was a white feminist who did not understand the intersectionality on feminism.[x]
Women on the Internet cannot be generalized since the spectrum of women differs from their identity. This was brought by the third wave of feminism that argued that the voice of marginalized society nor the oppressed society should be Interpreted differently as what Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw explains further in her ideas about Intersectionality. Crenshaw’s explanation on intersectionality is based on the multiple intersections of the oppressed group. Intersectionality uses traffic as an analogy to show how discrimination can have various causes that are hard to determine.[xi] Bell Hooks then took this idea further in her book entitled ‘The Will to Change’ where she explains about the usage of the phrase ‘imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy’ to portray the intertwining political systems that are the base of most racial thoughts of people.[xii]
Both the ‘whites’ and the ‘POCs’ have transformed Twitter as one of the media for digital feminists, where Twitter is a platform that is supposed to support this movement on fighting against patriarchic and misogynists domination. The case of #WomenBoycotTwitter is a form of collective concern of women in twitter that triggered this essential idea of populism that pops out through tweets on Twitter. This movement will then create a new function of Twitter to collect information based on the concerns of the people, and in this case, discriminative acts toward both sexes, gender, and its intersectionality on the Internet. We can see here that more ideas can be spread and discussed in more media, including Twitter. Hence, we can see more voices being heard and more essentials being amplified.
Picture: theguardian.com / Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
References:
[i] McVeigh, Tracy. (2014). Meet the new wave of activists making feminism thrive in a digital age. [online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/01/activists-feminism-digital [Accessed 6 Nov. 2017]
[ii] Moran, Lee. (2017). Women Boycott Twitter In Solidarity With Rose McGowan. [online] Huffington Post. Available at: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/women-boycott-twitter-rose-mcgowan-harvey-weinstein_us_59e0643fe4b0a52aca16d3a2 [Accessed 13 Oct. 2017]
[iii] Bowles, Nellie, Cara Buckley. (2017). Rose McGowan’s Twitter Account Locked After Posts About Weinstein. [online] New York Times. Available at:https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/arts/rose-mcgowan-twitter-weinstein.html [Accessed 13 Oct. 2017]
[iv] Quackenbush, Casey. (2017). Women Are Boycotting Twitter For the Day to Protest Harassment and Abuse. [online] Time. Available at: http://time.com/4981081/women-boycott-twitter-sexual-harassment/ [Accessed 13 Oct. 2017]
[v] Bell, Chris. (2017). Why are some women boycotting Twitter?. [online] BBC. Available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-41606731 [Accessed 14 Oct. 2017]
[vi] Dixon-Smith, Matilda. (2017). Rose McGowan Is “Profoundly Sorry” For Going White Feminist In Her Fight Against Weinstein. [online] Junkee. Available at: http://junkee.com/rose-mcgowan-white-feminism/131129 [Accessed 18 Oct. 2017]
[vii] Kent, Clarkisha. (2017). #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen, Part 2: On Rose McGowan and the Continued Failure of White Feminism. [online] The Root. Available at: http://www.theroot.com/solidarityisforwhitewomen-part-2-on-rose-mcgowan-and-1819604768 [Accessed 18 Oct. 2017]
[viii] Bent, Gender. (2017). PEAK WHITE FEMINISM: ROSE MCGOWAN’S “REPLACE WOMEN WITH THE N-WORD” TWEET IS COMPLETE BS. [online] Afropunk. Available at: http://afropunk.com/2017/10/peak-white-feminism-rose-mcgowans-replace-women-n-word-tweet-complete-bs/ [Accessed 18 Oct. 2017]
[ix] Smalls, Amelia. (2017). Why Rose McGowan’s “replace the word women with the N-word” tweet is a reflection of white feminism. [online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/@ameliastark_29849/replace-the-word-women-with-the-n-word-6979f9673846 [Accessed 18 Oct. 2017]
[x] ibid
[xi] TED. (2016). The urgency of intersectionality : Kimberlé Crenshaw. Available at: [Accessed 18 Oct. 2017]
[xii] Hooks, B. (2004). The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, New York, NY: Atria Books.
